The End Is Near

Whether I like it or not, the end of the school year is on its way. In our district, we have a little over five weeks left, and with testing days, that doesn't leave very much time for curriculum. As a result, I am already thinking about what to do the last few weeks of school as a review and I have decided today that I am going to do one of the scariest things of my career thus far...I am going to put the review in the hands of my students. If there is one thing I have learned in my last 8 years of teaching, it is that the majority of MY LEARNING has happened as a result of teaching. I have a lot of leaders in my classes, and I want to give them an opportunity to make the material of my class meaningful to themselves and their peers.

The only plan I have is to split the class into groups of three and to give each group a chapter and half a class period to review with their peers. The delivery is up to them. The following will be their prompt.

With a group of no more than 3 people prepare a presentation about your assigned chapter. Your presentation must include the following:

- A thorough explanation of the content of your chapter

- At least 20 examples of the grammar concepts

- A follow up activity that incorporates the grammar and vocabulary

Some ideas/things to consider depending on your chapter:

Write a short story	Conduct an interview with… about….	Write some journal entries	Create flowcharts	Find and explain patterns in…
Create some “wanted”  posters	Create a Powerpoint or Prezi	Create a video	Create a webpage	Design a game
Dramatize your presentation	Create a dance or sequence of movements to explain…	Create a scavenger hunt	Design a relay race	Write or sing a song/rap
Write a rhyming poem	Design a commercial/brochure/ad campaign	Facilitate a round table discussion	Plan a debate	Create another unique scene or experience for our class of your choosing

I do not know what the end products will look like, but, I plan to provide students with ample time to plan and myself ample opportunities to monitor progress. I'll be back with an update! Thanks!

Negative and Affirmative Tú Commands

For the last week, my students and I have been working on Mandatos. Last year, they learned affirmative commands, and these are now being scaffolded into negatives. Overall, this seems to be a topic they latch onto. Afterall, as teenagers these are phrases they are fairly used to hearing.

On Thursday, I approached the concept in terms of a recipe. I actually brought in avocados, tomatoes, salt, cilantro, and jalapeños. I set them on a table at the back of the room next to a knife, cutting board and a bowl and I asked my students to write about what I could do with those things. As I had suspected, they all decided to write about guacamole and how one would go about making it.

Standing behind the table I called on students individually to give me a step and I performed them in front of the class one by one. By having them write it out first, all kids were put in the mindset of what we working on and it gave them a frame of reference. By asking them one at a time to tell me what to do, they had to listen to their peers and  often modify their steps to what was happening in the room. As you can imagine, food is riveting for teenagers, it wasn´t hard to keep their attention as we went through the process. When we had a completed bowl (which was done the food network way--with hidden pre-cut veggies thrown together at the very end) I was able to ask the kids about things I shouldn´t have done while they all ate our concoction. They then had to write out a final copy of the recipe on a recipe card that they could take home.

On Monday, I plan to review commands again. This time, I intend to use this picture that was shared on Edmodo.

My plan is to give a copy of this photo to each of my students and have them write their name under the feet of the character. Once they have completed that, I will recollect them and randomly pass them out to their peers. Once everyone has one I will be asking each student to choose a side and write ONE affirmative command on the sheet in front of them. When it is completed, I will have them pass it to the person next to them and then they will write one NEGATIVE command in a bubble of their choice. We will continue to pass the sheets around the room until all bubbles are filled.

Note: I intend to make sure all students are APPROPRIATE in their responses and also to encourage them to write a different phrase each time they are given the opportunity. In the end, I think this will have the personal feel that many of them enjoy about Spanish class.